LinuxWorld Expo New Haven for Corporate Users, Vendors - page 5

The New Breed of Expo Attendee

January 26, 2003

By
Brian Proffitt

Somewhere out there is a picture of a classic historical irony: Peter
Houston, Senior Director of Windows Server Strategy, getting an Open
Source Product Excellence Award for Best Systems Integration from
Penelope Penguin.

It is what we call a "grip-and-grin" in the news biz, but the sheer
juxtaposition of the subjects of that photo make it truly interesting
indeed.

By sheer luck, I happened to be sitting right in front of Houston when
the award was announced. Surprised was not the word for his
reaction--"stunned" comes to mind. He took part in the whole thing
with good sport, which pretty much summed up Microsoft's public face
at this Expo--good sports who wanted to get a feel for what the heck
was driving people to Linux.

I spoke with Houston the next day, to get his thoughts on their view
of the show thus far. They were expecting more developers than they
actually met, he told me, and they were actually seeing more corporate
IT decision makers than they expected.

The same thing had happened in San Francisco last August, Houston
explained, where they has been "surprised to see the level of
corporate advisors."

All in all, Houston added, the staff of the Microsoft booth was
pleased with the level of depth in the conversations they were having
at this show--something they did not always get at other trade shows.

But while Microsoft is politely checking out the lay of the land, don't expect
them to give up on competing with Linux. They have received the
message from their own customers, Houston explained, that "we should
tell them the value of our products, rather than discuss other
licenses."

The message has been received loud and clear, as Houston
reiterated in the meeting that Microsoft still has concerns about how
open sourced software would be able to address the needs of very
complex projects.

But, Microsoft also knows that they won't be able to wish Linux away,
and some of their tools reflect customer's needs to work in a
heterogeneous environment. It was their Services for UNIX 3.0 tool
that won the Systems Integration award, and it was one of the products
their booth was talking about.

And, Houston said, it would a product that Microsoft would be talking
more about in the future.